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As I watched around my room, silent and tranquil, it struck me for the first time that I’d perhaps won the war over the cockroaches.

The battle began three days ago, with a single spray of a bottled pesticide. Soon after, the roaches had begun coming out from the hiding, in numbers I never imagined possible. Showing up beside my bedside, my bookshelf, my work desk, and at every nooks and corners of the apartment. And I would go running around with the spray and a broomstick like a lunatic, but it would never be enough. Every half-an-hour or so, a gang of them would crawl out, as if swapping one hide-out for the other, going right beneath my feet, teasing me.

I could have stopped it all, you know. When the first wave of invaders had just begun showing up, when they were few and fragile.

But I’d chosen to do nothing. I wasn’t much at home – I left early and came back late in the night from work, only to have a good night’s sleep. So I didn’t care if a few cockroaches roamed my kitchen – a kitchen that I barely used. I imagined myself to be this good-hearted but crazed philosopher type, who meant well even for the pest infecting his home. Awwww. And I felt quite happy about it.

But the matters had quickly escalated from then on.

The bloody pests had begun taking advantage of the liberty and hospitality I offered. Lately, they had stopped even being scared, and would come out from their hiding at any hours, nibbling away at my food or climbing onto my body while I slept – one of them even tried to chew on me one night. Guess, I didn’t make for a good dinner, and it left me alone with only a nasty wound.

Perhaps, it was their way of showing appreciation, I wouldn’t know, but it frightened the hell out of me.

Consequently, I raised the war. I sat with a broomstick beside me, at all times, and squashed up the petty insects every time they dared approach me. And I sprayed the hell out of them from each of their dark corners and secret hide-outs. Then I gathered all of them together, and I watched them burn.

But now as I watch them writhe in the toxic air I sprayed all over them, and listen to their body cringe and creak in the heat, (and with a deep satisfaction in my heart as well!) I can’t help but feel like a sadist.

See, it wasn’t their fault entirely. It wasn’t like they had entered my home without my knowledge. They made it abundantly clear that they had come. But I had chosen to do nothing. Then, perhaps thinking that I was totally cool with this, they had begun raising their families, building homes, and had finally found a life for themselves in my little apartment.

Come to think of it, they had been living there more than me. No doubt, the next generation of them must have been totally convinced that it actually was their home, and I was the hostile invader who showed up at odd hours of the night with a broomstick and a funny scream.